clination, argues how little truth we can expect from the sequel of this book, which ventures in the very first period to affront more than one nation with an untruth (22) so remarkable; and presumes a more implicit faith in the people of England, than the pope ever commanded from the Romish laity; or else a natural sottishness fit to be abused and ridden: while in the judgment of wise men, by laying the foundation of his defence on the avouchment of that which is so manifestly untrue, he hath given a worse soil to his own cause, than when his whole forces were at any time overthrown. They therefore, who think such great service done to the king's affairs in publishing this book, will find themselves in the end mistaken; if sense and right mind, or but any mediocrity of knowledge and remembrance, hath not quite forsaken men.

19. But to prove his inclination to parliaments, he affirms here, "to have always thought the right way of them most safe for his crown, and best pleasing to his people." What he thought, we know not, but that he ever took the contrary way, we saw; and from his own actions we felt long ago what he thought of parliaments or of pleasing his people: a surer evidence than what we hear now too late in words.

(22) Dr. Gauden, the real author of the Eikon Basilikè, was in search of a bishopric, not of truth, when he made this assertion; which, if it were believed, or judged to be a plausible falsehood, by those of his own party, would no doubt to his mind be success enough.

20. He alleges, that "the cause of forbearing to convene parliaments was the sparks, which some men's distempers there studied to kindle." They were indeed not tempered to his temper; for it neither was the law, nor the rule, by which all other tempers were to be tried; but they were esteemed and chosen for the fittest men, in their several counties, to allay and quench those distempers, which his own inordinate doings had inflamed. And if that were his refusing to convene, till those men had been qualified to his temper, that is to say, his will, we may easily conjecture what hope there was of parliaments, had not fear and his insatiate poverty, in the midst of his excessive wealth, constrained him.

21. "He hoped by his freedom and their moderation to prevent misunderstandings." And wherefore not by their freedom and his moderation? But freedom he thought too high a word for them, and moderation too mean a word for himself: this was not the way to prevent misunderstandings. He still "feared passion and prejudice in other men;" not in himself: " and doubted not by the weight of his" own "reason, to counterpoise any faction;" it being so easy for him, and so frequent, to call his obstinacy reason, and other men's reason, faction. We in the meanwhile must believe that wisdom and all reason came to him by title with his crown; passion, prejudice, and faction came to others by being subjects.

22. "He was sorry to hear, with what popular heat elections were carried in many places." Sorry

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rather, that court-letters and intimations prevailed no more, to divert or to deter the people from their free election of those men, whom they thought best affected to religion and their country's liberty, both at that time in danger to be lost. And such men they were, as by the kingdom were sent to advise him, not sent to be cavilled at, because elected, or to be entertained by him with an undervalue and misprision of their temper, judgment, or affection. In vain was a parliament thought fittest by the known laws of our nation, to advise and regulate unruly kings, if they, instead of hearkening to advice, should be permitted to turn it off, and refuse it by vilifying and traducing their advisers, or by accusing of a popular heat those that lawfully elected them.

23. "His own and his children's interest obliged him to seek, and to preserve the love and welfare of his subjects." Who doubts it? But the same interest, common to all kings, was never yet available to make them all seek that, which was indeed best for themselves and their posterity. All men by their own and their children's interest are obliged to honesty and justice: but how little that consideration works in private men, how much less in kings, their deeds declare best.

24. "He intended to oblige both friends and enemies, and to exceed their desires, did they but pretend to any modest and sober sense;" mistaking the whole business of a parliament; which met not to receive from him obligations, but justice; nor he to expect from them their modesty,

but their grave advice, uttered with freedom in the public cause. His talk of modesty in their desires of the common welfare, argues him not much to have understood what he had to grant, who misconceived so much the nature of what they had to desire. And for "sober sense," the expression was too mean, and recoils with as much dishonour upon himself, to be a king where sober sense could possibly be so wanting in a parliament.

25. "The odium and offences, which some men's rigour, or remissness in church and state, had contracted upon his government, he resolved to have expiated with better laws and regulations." And yet the worst of misdemeanors committed by the worst of all his favourites in the height of their dominion, whether acts of rigour or remissness, he hath from time to time continued, owned, and taken upon himself by public declarations, as often as the clergy, or any other of his instruments, felt themselves overburdened with the people's hatred. And who knows not the superstitious rigour of his Sunday's chapel, and the licentious remissness of his Sunday's theatre; (3) accompa

(23) It may be observed that our wise and pious ancestors thought Sunday the day best adapted for theatrical representations; and that, during a great part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the theatres were licensed to be open only on that day. (Origin of the English Stage, p. 222.) Stephen Gosson, in his School of Abuse, (12mo. 1579,) says of the players" These, because they are allowed to play every Sunday, make four or five Sundays, at least, every week." Another anti-theatrical author says "These unsavoury morsels of unseemly sentences, passing out of the mouth of a ruffianly player, doth more content the

nied with that reverend statute for dominical jigs and maypoles, published in his own name, and derived from the example of his father, James ? Which testifies all that rigour in superstition, all that remissness in religion, to have issued out originally from his own house, and from his own authority.

26. Much rather then may those general miscarriages in state, his proper sphere, be imputed to no other person chiefly than to himself. And which of all those oppressive acts or impositions did he ever disclaim or disavow, till the fatal awe of this parliament hung ominously over him? Yet here he smoothly seeks to wipe off all the envy of his evil government upon his substitutes and underofficers; and promises, though much too late, what wonders he purposed to have done in the reforming of religion: a work wherein all his undertakings heretofore declared him to have had little or no judgment: neither could his breeding, or his course of life, acquaint him with a thing so spiritual. Which may well assure us what kind of reformation we could expect from him; either some politic form of an imposed religion, or else

hungry humours of the rude multitude, and carrieth better relish in their mouths, than the bread of the Word. Wherefore, abuse not so the Sabbath-day, my brethren; leave not the temple of the Lord." The writer of the Origin of the English Stage, remarks "I do not recollect that exclamations of this kind occur in Prynne, whence I conclude that this enormity no longer subsisted in his time." I forget the date of Prynne's Histriomax, but we here find from Milton that the practice still survived, at least at court, in Charles I.'s reign,